Blog: Workers Compensation

Florida's workers' compensation system has its own coverage thresholds, its own reporting deadlines, its own benefit structure and its own special rules, such as the PTSD provisions for first responders. Someone who learned workers' comp in another state, or who learned it only in general terms, can get Florida wrong in ways that cost money and create penalties.

The Florida Workers' Compensation Specialist (WCS) designation is a training credential built for that problem. It pairs a ...

Most workers' comp claims resolve without much effort. An employee is hurt, sees a doctor, misses a few days or none, and returns to work. The claims that consume time and money are the others: the lost-time claim with no light-duty plan, the back strain that turns into months of disability, and, increasingly, the claim with a psychological component that nobody on the employer's side knows how to handle.

Workers' comp claims specialist training is about those claims. This post ...

Most people who end up responsible for workers' compensation never applied for the job. A payroll manager inherits the annual premium audit. An HR generalist becomes the person employees call after an injury. An owner discovers at renewal that the premium jumped and nobody in the building can explain why. Workers' comp training is the fix, but "workers' comp training" covers everything from a 90-minute primer to a technical designation that requires working experience mod calculations by ...

Most guidance on filing a workers' comp claim is written for the injured worker. This guide is for the other side of the desk: the HR, payroll and operations people who have to get the employer's part right.

The employer's part matters more than it looks. The employer usually controls how fast the carrier hears about an injury, what facts are captured while they are fresh, whether federal OSHA obligations are met, what wage figure the benefit is calculated from and whether anyone is ...

The premium on a workers' compensation policy is an estimate. The number on the information page at binding is based on what you told the agent your payroll would be, in the classifications the underwriter assigned. The premium audit is where the carrier replaces that estimate with what actually happened.

For most employers the audit is the single largest controllable variance in workers' comp cost. A clean audit with well-organized records can produce a refund. A disorganized one ...

A "ghost policy" is a workers' compensation policy bought by a business that has no employees to cover. The owner excludes themselves, nobody else is on payroll, and the insurer charges a minimum premium. What the business gets is not really coverage. It gets a certificate of insurance.

That certificate is the point. General contractors, property managers, municipalities and large customers often require every vendor to show workers' comp coverage before starting work, whether or not ...

In most of the country, an employer buys workers' compensation from whichever licensed insurer offers the best terms, or self-insures if it qualifies. In four states, that choice does not exist. North Dakota, Ohio, Washington and Wyoming are the monopolistic states: workers' comp coverage for employers in those states comes from the state's own fund, and private insurers cannot write it.

For an employer based entirely in one of those states, this is simply how workers' comp works ...

The experience modification rate (EMR, experience mod, or simply "the mod") is the one number in a workers' compensation premium that belongs to you. The class code rate is shared by every employer doing the same kind of work. The payroll is whatever your business needed to run. The mod is your own claims history, measured against what was expected of an employer your size in your classifications, and turned into a multiplier.

That multiplier lands on the whole premium. A 1.25 mod ...